Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets)

by Jennifer Blake

  Despite that appearance, Julia still felt the tingling of nerves beneath her skin. So acute was her apprehension that she shied at the feathery touch of a large moth that blundered past her as she turned back toward the lighted gulphor. Castigating herself for a silly fool, she stepped into the room.

  A whisper of sound, a faint rustle of clothing, was her only warning. Before she could react, a muscular arm caught her from behind, clamping about her waist. The knife she wore at her side was plucked from its scabbard and sent spinning across the room to land with a clatter against the wall. In the same instant, she was given a hard shove that sent her stumbling, to sprawl onto the divan.

  Julia twisted to her side, flinging the hair back from her face so she could see. A man stood between her and the garden door with a vicious smile drawing his full lips back over his teeth. As she stared at him, he reached behind him to take up a kurbash, which leaned against the wall where he had placed it.

  “Yes, Julia, ma chère,” Marcel de Gruys drawled. “It is I. At last, the time has come for which I have long waited. We are alone, and I have in my hands the means to settle old scores, and new ones.” He slashed the rhinoceros-hide whip through the air, so that it sang with an evil whine. “Do you flinch, my lovely, untouchable Julia? Do you cringe with dread? Well, you might, for I intend to take my toll of your lovely white skin. This time you have no weapon with which to thwart me, for I have seen to that. I will now exact from you in pain the price of a knife wound in the back and a ball in the chest, and also, the pleasure which you denied me of being known as the man who saved the world from Napoleon Bonaparte, and for the failure to secure here in Algiers a puppet ruler for France. Oh yes, I know whom I have to thank for the destruction of my plans. I told that fool Kemal he was taking too great a chance, remaining hidden so close to a place where you came and went, so close to the abode of one who had been of the palace. He laughed at me, certain his disguise could not be penetrated. Hadn’t you passed us in the streets a half dozen times without a hint of recognition? Each time I wanted to take you by force and eliminate you in my own way. Such pleasure was denied to me. You were not that important, he contended, but important enough that your disappearance would cause a thorough search of the section of the city where we were hiding. He promised to give you to me to do with you as I would when he was in power, to finish what was between us at my leisure. Imbecile! That I listened to him is my shame. No matter, I will not be cheated of my due though a Moorish princeling lies in chains and Islamic dogs bay at my heels! I will hear you beg for mercy and see you writhing at my feet if it is my last sight on earth! And, when that is done and the sight has sufficiently whetted my desire, I will have you while you whimper and cry under me!”

  His eyes blazing, he swung his arm back. As he began the downward slash, Julia gathered her muscles and rolled over the backless divan. The whip bit down into the covering where she had lain, slicing into it like the sharp edge of a knife. She bounded to her feet, and as Marcel started for her over the divan, she made a dash to where the blade of her knife gleamed in the far corner.

  Marcel also saw her objective. He leaped in the same direction, and as she reached out for the knife, the kurbash came down across her outstretched fingers.

  Her hand went numb, then a sickening wave of pain washed over her. Before she could recover, the kurbash swung again, slashing into the bare skin about her waist. The third blow tipped into the thin muslin of her pantaloons to curl about her hips. A red haze of agony rose before her eyes. Instinctively, she turned her back, trying to protect her soft underbelly, and the tender globes of her breasts. She received the full weight of a cracking blow across her shoulder blades, and her body was gripped in the sudden paroxysm of unbearable anguish. Blindly, she put out her hand, holding to the wall for support, sagging against the cool stone.

  Abruptly, the blows ceased. She heard the slow, assured footsteps as Marcel approached her. She could feel the warm trickle of blood where the kurbash had bitten into bare skin. By a supreme effort of will, she raised her head and pushed away from the wall, turning like an animal at bay to face Marcel.

  He smiled, his black eyes holding hers as he thrust the whip under his arm and drew a knife from the sheath at his side. “As much as I am enjoying this, I believe my pleasure would be greater if you were somewhat less well clothed.”

  With ludicrous care, he inserted the tip of the knife beneath the fastening of her bodice between her breasts. With one quick upward flick, he sliced it through. The sharp blade caught in the chain she wore, however, cutting the soft pure gold with ease. The yellow diamond, and also her gold bee worn with it when she went unveiled, fell to the floor. Marcel scarcely noticed as he used the blade to flip the two sections of her bodice open, exposing the firm, warm treasure to his darkling gaze. Julia drew in her breath, flattening her stomach as his attention turned downward. There was nothing she could do with a knife pressed against her abdomen. Gold and silver beads scattered, bouncing over the floor, as her girdle parted, allowing her pantaloons to settle about her ankles.

  Reaching out, Marcel caught her wrist, jerking her forward away from her clothing on the floor. As he stripped the bodice down her arms and tossed it aside, she stood before him as naked as the day she had been born. He ran his tongue over his lips, devouring her with his eyes. “Soon,” he said. “Soon now, you will beg me to stop, promise me anything to spare you the pain. I may be tempted to call a halt before I am done if you beg prettily enough and offer yourself with the proper abandon.”

  What reservoir of strength she drew upon she did not know, but in an instant, her eyes blazed with scorn. In defiance of the memory of Mariyah under the whip and the keening scream that had come finally from the Circassian’s lips, she said, “Never! Never, though I die for it!” And, in the same instant, she brought up her free hand in a swinging blow that snapped his head back.

  “One more thing for which you must pay,” Marcel granted, and wrenching her arm behind her back, he bent over her, smearing his hot lips over her face as he tried to cover hers.

  Julia strained away, though her elbow and shoulder were on fire with pain. She pushed at him, the air caught tight in her lungs against the nauseating slickness of his groping mouth and the smell of his breath. To kick out at him was her one thought. She jerked up her right knee, trying to find his ankle. Her knee struck between his legs, and the effect was instantaneous. Marcel gave a gasping yell and threw her bodily from him. She struck the wall and fell heavily on her side. Before she could recover, the whining whip bit into her shoulder and her flank.

  At that moment, there came a soft sound from behind them in the direction of the kitchen. A serving woman stood in the doorway of the gulphor. Her eyes grew wide with horror as they fastened upon Julia, and then as Marcel swung around with a curse, the woman backed away, scuttling out of sight.

  Minor though the distraction was, it was enough. Never for an instant had Julia been unaware of where her knife lay. Now, she scrambled to her hands and knees and lunged for it. As she felt her fingers curl around the cool, jewel-encrusted metal, she felt a surge of strength. It would not last long she knew, but perhaps it would last long enough.

  Her sudden movement brought Marcel around. He checked at the sight of the weapon in her grasp, then relaxed. “So, you have your knife,” he jeered. “Much good may it do you. This time I am doubly armed against you; I have a weapon and I know your mind. To damage me with your toy, you must first get close, and I think you will find that my reach is far longer than yours.”

  To prove his point, he drew his arm back and sent the kurbash slicing down at her once more. It was a mistake, for it gave her an open target. Without hesitation, she turned the knife so that the blade was in her fingers. And then, as Jawharah had shown her once in the spring sunlight, she sent it flashing straight at his chest.

  Perhaps her strength was not as great as she thought. Perhaps the trembling in her arm betrayed her aim. Whatever the cause, the handle
of the knife struck first with a thud. The useless blade clattered to the floor.

  Marcel’s grin of triumph, coming as it did after a moment of sheerest terror, was an evil thing to see. He had shuddered to a halt as he was struck, and now, once more he sent his arm back to flay her.

  The blow never landed. Like a trio of furies, the two serving women and the cook erupted from the kitchen area. They were armed with a broom and a carving knife, a pan and a fire poker, a skillet, and a mallet. Alarm spread over Marcel’s face. He tried to hold his ground, cutting the air with the kurbash. The broom served as a good defense against his blows, however, and he was backed slowly toward the door, with the women yelling, screaming, shrieking insults at the top of their lungs. Turning his back to find the handle of the door was a mistake. A sharp blow from the pan to the side of his head sent him to his knees, and he was beaten to the floor under a rain of blows.

  Julia tried to speak, to tell the women to stop short of killing him, but she could not command her voice. Instead, she began to laugh, and at the same time, tears began to stream from her eyes. Raising shaking hands to her face, she bowed her head onto her knees. When next she looked up, one of the serving women was placing a blanket about her while a eunuch guard stood to one side. She had not been aware of losing consciousness, and yet, she must have, for Marcel was nowhere in sight.

  When she was covered, the guard picked her up and carried her from the apartments. Where they were going she did not know. She wanted to protest, to object to the chafing of the blanket against her raw skin and the movement that sent black arrows of pain through her brain, wanted to declare her unwillingness to leave Rud’s apartments. The words would not quite form themselves upon her tongue. There was a strange gray fog gathering around her. Through it, she was looming nearer and nearer the great carved cedar doors of the harem of the dey. They opened wide, swallowed her up, and were slammed shut behind her.

  22

  Footsteps, whispers, the overpowering, smoky smell of perfume censers, the sleepy chirp of the captive birds disturbed in their rest. These familiar things assaulted Julia’s senses as she was carried through the vastness of the common room. The guard turned down a corridor that reeked of hot oil from the lamps burning at intervals. A few strides more, and they ducked through the heavy swags of beaded curtains. Julia saw around her once more the confining walls of a cubicle such as she had thought never to see again. She was placed on the yielding softness of a couch. The guard bowed himself from her presence, and she was alone.

  Her solitude did not last. Before the curtains had stopped swinging behind the guard, Ismael, the Arab physician, stepped through. He removed the blindfold he had worn as he was guided through the harem and handed it to the serving woman waiting outside. Then, he turned to Julia. With gentle hands, he cleansed her stripes and soothed their pain with a healing balm. He spoke little as he turned her this way and that, though his mouth was grim and sometimes he made a sound of mingled sympathy and anger that he was unable to suppress. He mixed a draft, which Julia recognized as having the distinctive odor of the fruit of the poppy, and placed it in her hand.

  “No musk this time?” Julia inquired, phantoms of memory dancing in her amber eyes in the flickering light of the lamp.

  “No musk,” he replied as he watched her drink and took the cup away. With cool, passionless fingers, he drew a linen coverlet over her, then sat beside her until she slept.

  Julia awakened to a quiet, but steady tapping. She raised curiously heavy eyelids to see a woman standing over her. She was blonde, plump, and in a high state of irritation. Her lips were thin, her eyes hard, and her slippered foot patted the floor with a monotonously regular sound. It was Isabel.

  In the weeks since Julia had last seen her, she had lost her air of naiveté.

  “So, you have returned to your old place,” the girl said as she saw Julia’s gaze sharpen with consciousness.

  Julia moistened her lips. “It begins to look that way.”

  “Why? You were not happy here before. I know, because you told me so yourself. Why have you put yourself in the way of the dey again?”

  Surely, it was not jealousy that caused the sharp tone in Isabel’s voice. “I did not put myself in the way of the dey. In fact, I have no idea why I am here, except perhaps to make it easier for Ismael the physician to come to me.”

  “You lie. The order to bring you here was given to your guard by the commander of the eunuchs. You, of all people, must know that this man acts only on the orders of his master, and mine.”

  “I swear I have had no communication with Ali Dey. I am here because of these,” Julia said, and threw back the coverlet to reveal her whip marks.

  Isabel sucked in her breath. “You — you must have displeased Reuben Effendi mightily.”

  “The effendi did not do this,” Julia said sharply. “It was another, who came last night while the guards were called away, the Frankistani called de Gruys, who was involved in the attempt upon the life of the dey.”

  “Ah, this one has been placed under arrest.” The other girl looked thoughtful. “It may be that the dey sought to protect you, then, while Reuben Effendi was busy with other things. There is much respect between the illustrious ruler of Algiers and the Frankistani who was once my master.”

  Julia nodded without reply. She had no strength to argue. Her lash marks gave her surprisingly little pain, however. She was sore, but the burning and inflammation had gone, taken away by the ointment Ismael had used.

  “There is still no reason to bring you here,” Isabel persisted. “You could have been guarded as easily in the quarters of Reuben Effendi as here. You would have been safe enough with your guards returned to duty.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I think Ali Dey may have seen a way of wresting you from Reuben Effendi. You have always excited his interest. He gave you the yellow diamond, did he not? I have watched from hiding and seen him gaze upon you when he thought no one was looking. He envied his friend the possession of you, for you are like the rare gem which all men wish to own.”

  “It is kind of you to say so,” Julia replied in a dry tone, “but I am sure you are wrong. Ali Dey was too occupied with the assassination attempt and the revolt to trouble with any woman. It is as I said, a case of bringing the patient to the physician.”

  “No,” Isabel said stubbornly. “Tell me, when you were in the harem, did you ever know of a woman of the dey to be examined in her cubicle?”

  Julia saw the trend of the question at once. Reluctantly, she answered, “No, they were always carried to a special chamber fitted with a curtain.”

  “And, the examination was conducted through the curtain by touch alone,” Isabel added.

  “It is so.”

  “Why, then, was Ismael the physician blindfolded, led to your chamber, then permitted to view your nakedness?”

  “It would not be the first time,” Julia said wearily, and went on to explain.

  Isabel gave a decided shake of her head. “That would make no difference. A slave dealer sees a woman who is bought by the dey before the sale, and yet, if he sets eyes on her afterward without knowledge and permission of her master, he may be blinded, even killed. And this, I think, is the answer. The dey gave his permission because he greatly feared to see your body scarred by the kurbash, and he knew it would be impossible to treat such injuries by touch.”

  “Isabel, please,” Julia said, closing her eyes. “I do not know why I am here, nor why I have been treated differently. I only know I do not intend to compete with you for the favor of Ali Dey.”

  “I believe you mean what you say. I also know you may not be able to help yourself.”

  This was indisputable. Julia swallowed hard, trying to ease the tight feeling in her chest. She heard Isabel turn and stride to the grilled window. After a time, she opened her eyes. Making a great effort, she asked, “Have you news of Reuben Effendi, and perhaps of Basim the dwarf?”

  “I have
not heard of their deaths, if that is what you mean,” Isabel said over her shoulder.

  It was not precisely what she had meant, but the information was welcome. Had Rud returned to their quarters? What had he thought to find her gone? Did he know what had happened and where she had been taken? Did he care? They had parted in coolness after an exchange of words. What had it been about? Oh yes, the whereabouts of Basim. Rud had sensed something was wrong. It had been a mistake to keep it from him. She should have known he would do nothing to jeopardize his position. With more advance warning, the efforts to prevent the attack could have been much better planned. Marcel might never have escaped the net spread to catch him.

  Abruptly, Isabel turned. “Kemal and his accomplices will be brought before Ali Dey in the audience chamber this morning. The wives of the dey have been given permission to attend, and also myself. There will be no objection, I think, if you wish to come also.”

  “Brought before the dey — to be judged?”

  “Even so. There can be no question of their guilt, for they were seen in the act of trying to strangle the slave who occupied the bed of Ali Dey. In the struggle to capture them, the Frankistani made his escape, but Kemal was taken with the — the young man who has been his favorite. Greatly wroth, the grandson of the old dey cursed Ali Dey and lamented that his attempt to kill him had been unsuccessful.”

  Julia raised herself so that she could look at the other girl. “This young man who was taken with Kemal, Isabel. Was he — could he have been your twin brother who was bought by Kemal and separated from you?”

  “Your memory is long, Jullanar. It is indeed he who came with me from my mother’s womb.”

  “Then, he is no more than a child, a boy of fifteen! What will happen to him?”

  Isabel’s face was grim, and suddenly older. “I have the promise of Ali Dey that he will not be killed. Some punishment there must be, but it will not be fatal or crippling. When it is over, my brother will be allowed to go free, I fear that my importunings in this matter may have angered the dey, but I could not, remain silent, I could not! It — it is for this reason that I fear the Illustrious One may look about him for another woman to take my place. It would not be fair, for I have held it for so short a time and come so near to attaining what I most desired, to be his wife.”